Anthroposophic Movement (1938)

Schmidt Number: S-5313

On-line since: 30th September, 2015

IV

BLAVATSKY'S ORIENTATION: SPIRITUAL, BUT ANTI-CHRISTIAN

When considering a phenomenon such as Blavatsky, especially
when considering it from the aspect that will be clear to you
from the remarks of the last three days, the first
consideration naturally is the personality as such, regarded
so-to-speak simply for itself, on the one hand. On the other
hand, one has to consider it in the aspect of a means, by which
a certain effect was produced upon a large number of people.
Well, this effect was in part certainly one of a very negative
kind. Those people, one may say, who heard anything of
Blavatsky's publications, in so far as they were people, say of
a philosophic or psychologic turn of mind, or literary, or
scientific, or what one might call in general ‘educated’, as
the term is used to-day, — such people were only too glad
to be rid in any way of this new apparition, and not to be
obliged to pronounce any sort of judgment on it. And they could
attain this aim of theirs all the better, that there were
circumstances, which I touched upon yesterday, under which they
could say: It was a proven fact that there had been bogus
practices, and one needn't trouble one's head further about
anything, where this kind of thing is said to have been
evidenced.

And
then, of course, more particularly, there were those people,
who had possession of old, traditional wisdom, — a
possession, of which I told you how little they understood it,
but which they used in one direction or another as a means of
power, — members of one or other of the secret societies.
And one must never forget, that any number of things in the
world are an effect of influences that go out from such secret
societies.

These people were not only glad not to need to pronounce any
judgment, but they were above all things concerned to devise
every conceivable means of preventing any more wide-spread
effects resulting from this open demonstration of the spiritual
world. For the things, as we saw, had been made public; they
could be read by everyone, spread abroad by everyone. And
thereby a good piece at least of the means of power, which
these societies wanted to keep in their own hands, was taken
from them. — And accordingly, behind things like those I
described yesterday one finds of course associates of such
societies, — particularly in the creation of opinion:
there are bogus practices behind.

But
what must seem to us of more importance still for our present
purpose, is that, in spite of all this, Blavatsky's writings,
and all the other things attached to her person, did
nevertheless create a certain impression with a large number of
people of the day; and that thereby those various movements
came into being, which bear the name, in a sense, of
theosophical.

In
all that is here said, I beg you to note that I always try, as
far as possible, to make the designations accord with the
facts. To-day the very usage of the words alone makes this
impossible for one, — impossible that is in many
quarters. For it is only too easy for a person to-day, who
hears a word, at once to establish what I might call a kind of
lexicographal relation between himself and the word: he looks
up some sort of verbal explanation, to spare himself as far as
possible the trouble of going into the thing itself.

This kind of literary gentleman, — and many people, too,
who carry more weight than literary gentlemen, — when
they hear of ‘theosophy’, look it up in the encyclopedia (or,
which may be much the same thing, in their heads), and find out
there what it is. Or they may go further, they are much more
conscientious maybe, and study all sorts of documents in which
such a word as ‘theosophy’ occurs; and then from this they take
the grounds for their sub-sequent criticism. You must notice,
with writings that deal with such things, in how far what they
say is the out-come of this kind of procedure.

But
in direct contrast to all this, one might say: How did the
particular society — or societies, indeed — that
collected round the Blavatsky phenomenon, come by their name of
‘Theosophical Society’? One may have never so much, — and
I have enumerated much that one may have, — against the
Theosophical Society; but at any rate it certainly cannot be
said about its origin at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, that they took the dictionary meaning of the word
‘theosophy’, and founded a ‘Theosophical Society’ because they
wanted to spread Theosophy as understood in the dictionary
sense. That was most decidedly not the case. The case was, that
a whole mass of communications were lying there from the
spiritual world, that had come through Blavatsky, — lying
there, ready, as communicated material. And the people now
found them-selves, for reasons which I will discuss later, as
good as compelled to execute the charge of this material by the
method of a society. And then there came the need of a name.
And then, the people who were ... well, everything is ‘debated’
to-day, and they ‘debated’ everything even in those days ...
who were debating then, what name they should give it, asked
themselves whether it should be called the ‘New Mystical
Society’? or should it be called the ‘Rosicrucian Society’? or
the ‘Magian Society’? And then they hunted up what other words
there were, and finally hit on the word ‘theosophy’ and
‘theosophical’.

So
that the word in actuality has very little to do with what was
spread abroad under it, so far as it is a word with an historic
derivation. It has therefore not much sense, when people take
the ‘meaning of the word’ as a basis for discussing the actual
things, — and especially not for liking or disliking
them. It is a question of these quite definite, concrete
things, which came into the world either through Blavatsky's
writings, or through other communications of hers. And it is
the purest accident, one might say, that the associations which
collected round these things took the name ‘Theosophical
Society’. It was simply, that no better word occurred to them.
This is a fact that must by no means be left out of account;
— for naturally there exist not only historic judgments,
as I might say, but also historic sentiments. Those, who have
historically studied the course of development in some special
branch of learning, find the term ‘theosophy’ turning up in a
variety of places; but what they find turning up there, has
nothing whatever to do in reality with what took again the name
of ‘Theosophical Society’.

Indeed, my dear friends, things like this must at any rate in
the Anthroposophical Society be treated very seriously, and
there should be, there at any rate, a certain dominant love of
accuracy; so that in time a true instinct may grow up for all
the quite unreal, superficially written stuff that has
gradually collected round these things in the world.

The
question, however, that must occupy us most peculiarly is this:
How did it come about, in spite of all, that a great number of
people in these recent times have felt inwardly impelled
towards these things that were thus revealed? For, here too is
a point, from which we shall be led on to what is again of
quite a different character, namely, to the anthroposophic
movement.

Now, when studying the phenomenon of Blavatsky, there is one
peculiarity of this personage on which especially stress must
be laid, for it is a very marked peculiarity. It is this,
namely, that H. P. Blavatsky was absolutely, one may really
say, anti-christian in mind, — absolutely anti-christian
in her orientation. In her Secret Doctrine, the
different impulses of a variety of primal religions, and the
evolution of religions, are displayed by her in what might be
called one grand splash. For objective demonstration she had
simply no capacity. Everywhere, even in cases where one would
rightly have expected an objective demonstration, she drags her
subjective judgments, her subjective sentiments into the
picture.

And
not only did she pass judgments, but she plainly shows
throughout, that she has profound sympathy with every kind of
religion in the world, excepting Judaism and Christianity, and,
on the other hand, a profound antipathy to Judaism and to
Christianity. Everything that comes from Judaism and
Christianity is everywhere, quite sharply, represented by
Blavatsky as being inferior and worthless, compared with the
great revelations of the various heathen religions: — a
quite pronounced anti-christian orientation, namely: but a
quite pronouncedly spiritual one. There is the ability in her
to speak of spiritual beings and spiritual events, as people
usually speak of beings and events in the sensible world; and
also to speak about many things of this world in such a manner,
that one may truly say, she possessed the faculty for moving
amongst actual spiritual agencies, as the man of to-day is
accustomed to move amongst physical, sensible effects;
spiritual phenomena are by Blavatsky talked of with the same
feelings of reality, with which the things of the physical
world are talked of usually by other people. A pronounced
spiritual orientation, therefore; and a pronounced
anti-christian orientation.

With this, however, comes the further capacity for discovering
the characteristic impulses in the different heathen religions,
the different natural religions, and raising them to the
surface and to people's understanding.

Now
there are two things which might surprise one: first, the
appearance at all to-day (meaning ‘to-day’ of course in the
historic sense) of a person whose orientation is in so
pronounced a degree anti-christian, and who looks to this
anti-christian orientation for the salvation of mankind. And
secondly, one might find it surprising, seeing that, after all,
very few people on the outside are heathen, but that people, on
the outside, have mostly a Jewish or Christian orientation,
— at least in our civilized regions, — that,
nevertheless, despite their Jewish and Christian orientation, a
very determinative and deep-reaching influence was exerted upon
these people (especially on those of a Christian orientation,
— less on those of the Jewish). — These are two
questions that must present themselves to our souls in any
discussion whatever of these life-conditions, by which modern
spiritual life is attended amongst the wider masses of
mankind.

Now, as regards Blavatsky's own anti-christianism, I would only
remind you, that there was another person, much better known in
Central Europe, — better known in some circles at least,
— who was at the least quite as anti-christian in his
orientation as Blavatsky; and that was Nietzsche, One cannot
well be more anti-christian in one's orientation, than the
author of the Antichrist was. And unlike as Nietzsche is
to Blavatsky, if only from the fact that Blavatsky, in respect
of what is called the modern education of the day, was really
more or less of an uneducated woman, whereas Nietzsche stood at
the top of modern culture; yet, unlike as they otherwise were
in the whole character of their souls, in this respect they
present a remarkable similar-ity: that the orientation of both
is eminently anti-christian. And it would be nothing short of
superficial, my dear friends, if one did not make at least some
enquiry into the reason of this anti-christian orientation in
these two persons. One gets, however, no answer, without going
somewhat deeper into the matter.

One
must be clear to oneself namely, that men to-day — and
indeed, ever widening strata of mankind, — have come to
be altogether cleft in two as regards their soul-life; —
a cleft which people do not always make clear to themselves,
which they try to smother over with their intellect, try to
smother over through a sort of intellectual cowardice; but
which only winds and weaves in these souls all the more deeply,
in the subconscious feelings of the mind.

One
should only clearly recognize, what the human race in Europe,
what the whole European race of mankind, together with their
American appendage, have become, under the influence of the
educational tendency of the last three, four, five centuries.
One should only consider, how great the division is in actual
reality, between all that to-day makes up the substance of
worldly education, and that which dwells as a religious impulse
in men. For, in truth, the majority of people are given to most
terrible delusions in this respect. They are introduced, even
from their first primary school, into this modern style of
education. Every power of thought, every inclination of the
soul, is directed into this modern style of education. And
then, as an addition, they are given, besides, what is supposed
to satisfy their religious desires. And between the two there
opened up a terrible gulf.

But
people do not get so far as really to put this gulf plainly
before their souls. They do not get to this. They prefer indeed
to give themselves up in this respect to utter delusions.

What, then, one must ask oneself was the historic process that
led to the cleavage of this gulf? — There you must look
back my dear friends, to those centuries, when as yet this
modern education did not exist, to times where the learned life
was pursued only by a small number of individuals, who had
received a very thorough preparation. Be quite clear as to the
fact, that at the present day, as regards exterior education, a
twelve-year-old schoolgirl has more in her than any educated
man of the eleventh or twelfth or thirteenth century. Such
things must not be overlooked. And this is education has grown
to rest upon a most extraordinarily i«tense feeling of
‘authority’, a downright invincible sense of authoritativeness.
This education has come, in the course of the centuries, to
have something ever more and more so to speak, at its command,
which makes the belief in this authoritativeness of modern
education ever greater and greater.

More and more during the course of the centuries has this
modern education come to be directed only to what the external
senses tell men, or what calculation tells them. Now the less
men go inwardly to council with themselves, the more plain it
appears to them, that what is true, is what they see — as
the saying is — with their five senses; or what can be
seen in the sense of being calculated, such as: twice two are
four: ‘What I see with my five senses, what is like twice two
are four, that is true.’ And in course of rejecting everything
else, and only at last taking up more and more into modern
education what is true in the way those things are true which
one sees with one's five senses or can count i»i one's
five fingers, so gradually — since they are such great
authorities this twice two are four and the five senses!
— so it came about, little by little, that modern
education, of which one can say, that it is as certain as twice
two are four and what the five senses tell one, — that
gradually this modern education came to be equipped with the
sense of authoritativeness which it possesses.

But
thereby too there arose ever more and more a feeling, that
everything which a man believes, everything which a man takes
for true, must justify itself before the tribunal of this
‘quite certain’ modern education. And now, as this modern
education passed over more and more into the Sensible and the
Calculable, it became impossible ever to put before men at all,
in a suitable way, any sort of truth whatever from those
regions, where mathematics are no longer valid and the senses
are no more of account.

In
what way, then, were truths of this sort put before men in
earlier centuries, before this modern education existed?

They were put before them in ceremonial images. In the
spread of religion, throughout long centuries, the essence lay,
not in the sermon, but in the ceremony, in the rites of the
ritual. It was plainly recognized that: One can't speak through
the intellect (which was not as yet developed in its present
form at all), one must speak through the image.

Just conceive for a moment, how it was still in the fourteenth,
in the fifteenth centuries, in Christian countries for example.
It was not the sermon there, that was the main thing: the main
thing was the ceremony; the main thing was, that men grew at
home in a world which they saw dis-played before them in
sublime and splendid imagery. All round the walls were the
painted frescoes, bringing home to them the life of the
spiritual world; much as though, with our earthly life, we
could reach up to the highest tops of the mountains, and then,
could one but climb only a little higher, the spiritual life
would begin. Pictorial, — speaking to the imagination,
— or in the audible harmonies of music, or else, if words
were used, then mantrical, in forms of prayer in forms of
formula, was the language that told of the spiritual world.

To
those ages it was quite clear, that for the spiritual world one
needs the image, not the abstract thought,— not that about which one may dispute, but the
visible illustration, the pictorial likeness; that one needs
what speaks to the senses, and yet speaks to the senses in such
a way, that, through the sensible presentation, it is the
spirit speaking.

And
now came the rise of the modern education, with its claims of
the intellect, with the claim that everything should be
justified, as the saying is, to reason.

Now
everything about Christianity too and about the mysteries of
Christianity, as well as about the Mystery of Golgotha and its
bearers, had all been told mainly in this picture form; and in
so far as words were used, in picture-form also, namely, in the
form of stories. And when dogmas began, they, too, were
still something that the mind grasped pictorially. So
that one may say that down to the thirteenth or fourteenth
centuries, the teaching of Christianity was carried on in an
altogether old-fashioned form. But this Christian teaching
remained uncontested in its own domain from any quarter, so
long as the intellectualistic education had not yet come on the
field, — so long as people were not required to justify
these things to reason.

Only study it in its rise, historically, through the
thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries, with
what a storm it burst in: this new demand in men to understand
everything with the intellect! What a world-historic critical
analysis begins! People as a rule to-day are no longer in the
least fully aware, what a world-historic critical ;analysis it
is, that there began!

One
may say then, that the man of to-day, — and really not
only amongst the upper ten thousand, but throughout the very
broadest grades, — is introduced in Christianity into a
religious life too; but alongside it he is introduced also into
an education of the modern style; and the two, —
Christianity and modern education, — now dwell together
in his soul. And it now turns out, — and it does so turn
out in fact, although people may not clearly recognize it,
— that with what this intellectualist education has
brought men, the truths of Christianity cannot be proved. The
truths of Christianity cannot be proved by it. And so,
from childhood up, to-day, one learns the ‘Quite Certainty’
that twice two are four, and that one must apply one's five
senses to this alone. One learns this Quite Certainty; and one
discovers, that if one intends to abide by this Quite
Certainty, ... that then, ... then, it will not do to bring
Christianity and this Quite Certainty into connection.

Those theologists, — the modern theologists, — who
have tried to bring the two into connection, have ended by
losing the Christ; they are no longer able to speak to the
broad masses of the Christ; at most they speak of the person of
Jesus. And so it keeps its ground during these latter
centuries, in the same old forms, but forms, which the modern
man simply fails in his soul any longer to accept; — so
it keeps its ground, this Christianity, but loses all inner
consistency, so to speak, in the soul. — What is the
reason?

My
dear friends, look at everything that history has already
brought forth in the form of Christianity. It is the greatest
dishonesty, when modern theologians to-day try to explain this
Christianity in any way rationalistically. It is quite
impossible rationalistically to explain this Christianity. One
cannot explain this Christianity, this Mystery of Golgotha and
its bearers with rationalities; one is obliged to speak of
spiritualities, if one would speak of Christ; to speak of
Christ, one must speak of a spiritual world. One cannot
possibly only believe in the Quite Certainty of one's five
senses and that twice two are four, and then honestly speak of
Christ as well. That is what one cannot do. And so it looked,
in the innermost bottom of their souls, as though the men of
modern times had no possibility, with an education such as they
receive, of understanding the Christ, of actually comprehending
Him; for rationalism and intellectualism have robbed men of the
spiritual world. The Christ name, indeed, the Christ
tradition, has remained; but without any aura, without
the vision of the Christ as a spirit among spirits, as a
spiritual being in a spiritual world. For the world which the
modern astronomy, biology, natural science, has brought with
it, is an un-spiritual world.

And
so in time there came numbers of souls, with a quite definite
need arising from these undergrounds of their being. Time
really moves on; and. the men of to-day, as I have often
insisted, are no longer the men of earlier times. They cannot
but ask themselves: I find myself joining together with a
number of others for the cultivation of spiritual truths:
Why do I do so? Why do you do so, each one of you? What
drives you to do so?

Now, what drives people to do this, has its seed for the most
part so deep down in the sub-reasoning, unconscient grounds of
the soul's life, that people as a rule are not very clear about
it. But the question is one that must be raised here, in what,
as I particularly said at the beginning, is intended as an
exercise in Self-Recollection for Anthroposophists.

When you look back into earlier times, it is a self-evident
matter to people, that outside them there are not only material
things and material proceedings, but that every-where through
it all there are spirits. People found a world of spirit all
about them, in their surroundings. And because they found a
world of spirit, they could comprehend the Christ. With modern
intellectualism one can nowhere find a world of spirit —
if one is honest; consequently one cannot either really
comprehend the Christ. And the modern educated man does not
comprehend the Christ. The people who have living in them two
different things. Yes, as a fact, are, in fact, quite definite
souls. They are those souls, who have living in them two
different things. Yes, as a fact, in most of these people who
come together in societies such as we are speaking of, there
are two things living, of a double kind.

In
the first place, there is a quite vague feeling which rises up
in the soul, and which the people can't describe, but which is
there. And if one examines this feeling by the means one
possesses in the spiritual world, one finds it to be a feeling
originating in earlier earth-lives, but earth-lives in
which people still had a spiritual world round about them.

Yes, indeed, my dear friends, people are beginning to come up
to-day, in whose souls something is inwardly rumbling from
earlier earth-lives. We should have no theosophists nor
anthroposophists either, if there were not people of this kind,
in whom there is a rumbling of earlier earth-lives. Such people
are to be found in every grade of our modern population. They
do not know that the thing comes from earlier earth-lives; but
it does come from earlier earth-lives. And from this there
arises the striving after a quite definite road, after a quite
definite form of know-ledge. — Truly, my dear friends,
the trees, as you saw them in earlier earth-lives, the external
material substances, as you then saw them, — that
does not work on after into this present life on earth; for,
all that, you saw with your senses, and those senses are
scattered to the dust of the cosmos; but what works on after,
is the inner, the spiritual substance of your earlier
earth-lives.

Now, a person may stand here at the present day in two
different ways. He may have a sense: There is something inside
me ... he doesn't know that it comes from earlier earth-lives;
but it is something coming from earlier earth-lives, and he has
the sense: There is something inside me — it is working
in me, — it is there; and however much I may know about
the world of the senses, this thing cannot be
'described; for it has brought nothing over with it save what
is spiritual; and if everything is now taken away from me at
the present day that is spiritual, then this thing, which comes
over from earlier earth-lives, remains dissatisfied. —
That is one thing.

The
other thing living in men is that they have a vague feeling:
‘My dreams should really tell me more than the sense-world!’ It
is, of course, an error, a delusion, when people fancy that
their dreams should tell them more than the sense-world does.
But what is the origin of this delusion? — this delusion
which in reality has grown up in proportion with the growth of
the modern style of education? For there is a peculiar
circumstance about this modern style of education: when people
to-day, who are ‘educated’ in the modern sense, come together
in their educated society gatherings, then, well then, one is
obliged to be ‘educated’; then one talks in the way
befitting persons who have a proper schooling in the modern
style. Should anyone begin to say anything whatever about
spiritual agencies in the world, then one must curl one's lips
sarcastically, — for that is the educated thing to do. In
our public-school education it is not admissible to talk of
spiritual agencies in the world. If one does so, one is a
superstitious, uneducated person. Then one must curl one's
lips; one must show that such things are proper to the
superstitious section of the populace.

Well, very often such society gatherings form into two groups.
Usually there is somebody present who takes half a heart to
talk about spiritual things of the kind. The company curls its
lips, and the major part goes off, and goes to play cards or to
some other pastime befitting human dignity. A few, however,
grow inquisitive; and they withdraw into a side-room and there
begin a long conversation about these things; while the rest
play cards or do other things that I am not so interested to
describe. And there sit the people in the side-room, listening
with open mouths, and cannot have enough of listening to what
they hear. — Only it must be in a side-room, otherwise
one is not ‘educated’.

And
yet, all that the modern man can get to like this, is still
more or less of the nature only of a dream. The things for the
most part are as disconnected and chaotic as dreams, that he
hears told in this way. And yet the man likes it all the same.
Why does he like it? The others, too, would like it really, who
have gone off to play cards; only that the passion for
card-playing is more strong than the liking to listen, —
at least they persuade themselves that it is.

What is it, then, that makes men in this modern age so fond of
going after dreams? — It is because they feel, —
and again quite instinctively, without being clearly aware of
it: — ‘All this that I have in my thoughts, and that lies
painted before my eyes in the outer, physical world, — it
is all very well; but it gives me nothing for my own soul-life.
Behind it all there must be something else. I feel it within
me. There is a secret thinking and feeling and willing that
goes on as uncontrolled in me even when I am awake, as my
dream-life goes on uncontrolled in me when I am asleep.’
— There is something in the background of men's souls
that is really dreamed, even when awake. This the modern man
feels. And he feels it, because in the outer world outside him
the spiritual is failing; he can only still snatch at it in
dreams. In earlier earth-lives he had it round about him in his
surroundings. And now the time has come when souls are born,
who, in addition to those impulses which rumble in them from
earlier earth-lives, have also rumbling within them that
which went on in their pre-earthly state of existence in the
spiritual world. For this bears a relation to the inner
dreaming; and this inner dreaming is an after-working of the
living reality in the pre-earthly state of existence.

Just consider to yourselves! The men of earlier times were
conscious of spiritual surroundings; their earthly state of
life did not, as it were, deprive them of the spirit. The men
of the new times feel the spiritual within them-selves. But not
only does the constitution of the soul in this age deprive them
of the spirit, but, in addition, a form of education has come
into the field which is hostile to the spirit, which argues the
spirit away.

If
we ask, what is it that brings men together in societies of the
kind we are here describing? it is because of these two
properties of the soul: — because there is something
rumbling within them from earlier earth-lives; — because
there is something rumbling within them from their pre-earthly
state of existence. With most of you this is the case. You
would not be sitting here if there were not these two things
rumbling within you.

And
if you think back into earlier states of society: — In
quite ancient times the social institutions were altogether
derived from the Mysteries, were in unison with the things that
were spiritually transmitted to men. Man was interwoven with
— we will say — a Social Being, which was at the
same time one with the object of his own soul's desire.

Take an Athenian. He looked above to the Goddess Athene. He
felt within his own soul his inner relationship with the
Goddess Athene. He made part of a common social life and being,
of which the people knew: it was instituted in accordance with
the designs of the Goddess Athene. It was the Goddess Athene
who had planted the olive trees round about Athens; the laws of
the State were inscribed at Athene's dictate. One had one's
place as man in a social community which accorded completely
with the voice of inner belief. Nothing was taken from a man
there, which the Gods, so to speak, had given him.

Compare this with the modern man. His position amid his social
circumstances is such, that there is a cleft gulf between what
he feels in his inward life, and the way he is outwardly
entangled in these social circumstances. He seems to himself,
— he does not clearly recognize it: it sits in his
sub-consciousness, — as though his soul was in constant
danger of having his body taken from it by external
circumstances. He feels his own connection through those
properties of the soul, — those impulses of which I
spoke, from earlier earth-lives and pre-earthly existence;
— he feels his own connection with a spiritual world. His
body belongs to the external institutions. His body must behave
in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of the external
institutions. This exerts in his sub-consciousness a continual
dread upon the modern man, lest in reality well, there are
already modern States where a man may feel as though his own
coat did not properly belong to him, because he owes it to the
tax-office! — But, at any rate, you will agree, my dear
friends, that in a large measure even one's physical body does
not belong to one; for in fact it is claimed by the external
institutions.

This dread haunts the modern man, that every day, so to speak,
he must deliver up his body to something which has no
connection with what is in his soul. And so modern man becomes
a seeker after something which belongs to quite other ages of
the world, and which he knew in his earlier lives on earth;
— so modern man becomes a seeker after something which
does not belong to the earth at all, which belongs to the
spiritual world, where he was in his pre-earthly existence.

All
this takes effect unconsciously, instinctively. Nevertheless,
it takes effect. And truly, one may say that what our
anthroposophic society has now come to be has really grown out
of small beginnings. It had to work at the beginning in the
most primitive fashion in quite small circles.

One
could tell a great many stories about the way in which the work
was carried on from small circles. At one time, for instance,
during the first years in Berlin, I had to lecture at erst in a
room with the jingling of beer-glasses going on at the back,
because it was a pot-house opening on to the street. And once,
when this was not available, we were shown into something which
was a sort of stable.

And
thither the people came, — the people who were, who are,
of the particular constitution I have described to you. —
In one German town I have lectured in a hall, which in part had
no sort of flooring, so that one continually had to look out
that one didn't tumble into a hole and break one's leg. But the
people came together there all the same, — those that had
these impulses in them. However, it is a movement which set out
from the first to be a common human one; and so the
satisfaction was just as great when the simplest minds turned
up in places such as I have just described. Rut still, it was
not felt to be all too disagreeable, — for, after all,
that too was part of human nature! — when people turned
up, more of the kind — as I might say — that then
stood sponsors to the anthroposophic movement in an
aristocratic style, as was the case in Munich. The door was not
closed to any kind of human forms and fashions. But always the
thing, my dear friends, which had to be regarded was this: that
the souls who thus came together were of the kind that were
constituted as I have described: so that, in reality, the
people who came together in associations like these were people
marked out by fate, — and are so still to-day: marked out
by fate.

If
people of this kind had not been there, you see, a personage
like Blavatsky would have met with no interest. For only with
persons such as these did she meet with any interest. What was
it then that these people more immediately felt? What was for
them the all-important thing? What was it that responded, so to
speak, to their own sentiments?

Well, one of the two things rumbling in their souls
found its response in the doctrine of recurrent
earth-lives. Each one could say to himself now, ‘I live, as
Man, in all ages of time; I am inwardly stronger than those
powers, which day by day are trying to snatch my body from me.’
This most deep-seated and intimate feeling, that verged really
on the nature of will in men, had to be met, then, by
the doctrine of recurrent earth-lives.

And
the other thing: of feeling the soul's life really more
like a dream, feeling it free from the body (even the
simplest countryman has this sense of the soul's being free of
the body), this, one could meet more and more with a form of
knowledge that was not directed merely on the lines of material
substance and material processes; for within this material
substance and its processes there was nothing whatever that
corresponded to what the man felt in his own soul-life, and
that was an after-echo of his pre-earthly existence. This, one
could only respond to, when one made it clear to him, that
— startling though it may sound — ‘Our deepest
human being is woven as it were out of dreams.’ For what
is woven out of us, as dreams are woven, — only that it
has a stronger reality, a stronger existence, — has no
likeness to the things which are in our physical surroundings.
A man is like a fish that is taken out of water and expected to
live in air, when, with what he bears within his soul, he is
expected to live in the world that modern education conjures up
before men's fancy. And just as the fish, when it can't breathe
in the air, begins to gasp and snap its gills, because it can't
live; so souls like these live in the modern atmosphere,
gasping and snapping after the thing they need. And this thing
which they need they don't find; because it is something
spiritual. For it is the after-echo of what they knew and lived
in during their pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world.
They want to hear of spiritual things, — that something
spiritual is there, — that the Spiritual is in the midst
of us.

Understand well, my dear friends, that these were the two most
important matters for a particular section of man-kind: To have
it explained to them that man lives beyond one single
earth-life; and to have it explained to them that beings exist
in the world at all of such a kind as man is: that there are
spirits amongst the things and the pro-cesses of nature.
— This was brought by Blavatsky in the first place. And
this people required to have first, before, in the next place,
they could understand the Christ.

And
now we have the curious fact that, with a note of compassion
— one might say — for humanity, we find Blavatsky
saying to herself: ‘These people are gasping after knowledge
from the spiritual world. If we disclose the old heathen
religions to them, we shall be disclosing what responds to
their spiritual needs.’ That was the first thing to be done.

And
that this led to an immense one-sidedness, led, namely, to a
form of Anti-christianity, is in every way quite
understandable; just as it is quite understandable that a
review of the modern Christianity, out of which he himself had
grown, led to such an intense Anti-christianity in
Nietzsche.

Of
this Anti-christianity and its remedy I propose to speak to you
in the next lectures. I only wish distinctly to note that this
Anti-christianity which showed itself in Blavatsky was, from
the first, absent from the anthroposophic movement. For the
first lecture-cycle ever held by me was the lecture-cycle
From Buddha to Christ, as I mentioned before. Thereby
the anthroposophic movement stands therefore on its own
footing, as something inde-pendent in the midst of all these
spiritual movements, through the fact that, from the very
beginning, it has pur-sued the road that leads from the heathen
religions towards Christianity.

And
one must no less understand, why it was that the others did
not take this road.